It was a good day to bowl and England’s attack underlined that by ending it on
top after their least impressive performance since the opening Test six
weeks ago.

Confident teams often get results when under par, which could explain why Michael Clarke, undetaking his first Test as Australia’s captain, chose to give his battered side first go at the crease despite the leaden skies, a decision that saw his team 134-4 by the close.

It might not even have been his decision, fully, the presence of Ricky Ponting around the team and dressing-room presenting enough ambiguity as to who exactly is in charge.

A day before the game Clarke said he would be the sole decision-maker on the field, although the toss is done on the pitch but not in play, so the former captain’s prints might well have been found on the decision after Australia decided to bat first.

They won't be for a day or two, though, as Ponting will have had surgery on his fractured finger and it will be heavily bandaged.

Most agreed it was a bold decision, especially with two debutants in the side, Usman Khawaja and Michael Beer. In fact, until the third ball before lunch, few were querying it after Australia’s openers posted their half-century stand without undue alarm.

But the conditions were difficult enough for batting - under leaden skies and with ball seaming about on a two-paced pitch - that regular wickets were always likely once the initial breach had been made.

For reasons that are not exactly clear, Clarke is neither loved nor trusted as much as those who’ve previously held the office of captain. He got a hearty cheer when he went into bat, but there are plenty who were briefing against him once wickets began to tumble; saying that batting first was a decision of damage limitation in case things went badly.

You certainly tend to get castigated more if things go awry after putting teams in, something Ponting knows only too well after Edgbaston 2005, the last time he inserted a team. But Pakistan dismissed Australia here last year for 127, after the home side batted first, so the dangers of taking first hit under heavy cloud at the SCG were well known.

England’s bowlers contributed to it looking like a decent decision by not performing as well as in recent matches. They didn’t exactly bowl poorly, for runs were not scored freely, but neither were they as menacing as their abilities and the conditions demanded. In fact, they bowled much better once Australia had passed 50, and they were no longer trying to force the issue.

Before that they pitched too short. If they are to yield their bounty, seaming surfaces require a precise but full length, something Mohmmad Asif produced to near perfection here last year, when he took six wickets in Australia’s first innings.

England were never quite full enough with enough meaning, which meant that whenever the ball seamed, as it did often, Australia’s openers either missed it comfortably or were able to leave it alone.

Chris Tremlett eventually got the breakthrough, when he had Phillip Hughes caught by Paul Collingwood at third slip, but was probably helped by Hughes playing for lunch, the only possible explanation for why the left-hander tried to ride the ball instead of flaying at it, his previous response to anything else outside his off-stump. Before that, he'd looked better than at any stage in the series.

Enter Khawaja, not just to one roar of goodwill from the home element in the 43,561-strong crowd, but three, after getting off the mark first ball from Tremlett, and then pulling the next to the boundary with the kind of emphatic grace last managed by Adam Gilchrist in the middle part of his career.

As a Test batsman in challenging conditions, he looked to the manner born. Although clearly representing Australia, after being presented with his Baggy Green by Mark Taylor, he has not yet acquired all the characteristics of Australian batsmen, as he showed when using soft hands to prevent an edge off Tremlett carrying to second slip.

The Aussie way is to go hard at the ball, which is why England’s bowlers have skittled them so easily whenever the ball has moved around.

The first Muslim to play for Australia is a noteworthy achievement and TV cameras were trained on his family watching from the crowd throughout his innings. His mother, Fozia Tariq, was a picture of nervous energy, wringing her hands even when her son wasn’t on strike. Perhaps she was wise to Shane Watson’s dodgy running between the wickets in the other Tests and was preparing in case her son was his next victim.

Khawaja certainly paid his way in his fifty stand with Watson, who once more played with duty and care before making the error that cost him his wicket. Pushing at the kind of ball he’d been leaving well alone before lunch, Watson edged Tim Bresnan to Strauss at first slip for another worthy but not match-changing 45.

Clarke followed him a few overs later, Bresnan getting him to cut a short ball straight to Anderson in the slips. It was a soft way for the new captain to go and it was followed by another tame dismissal when Khawaja top-edged his sweep shot off Graeme Swann to Jonathan Trott, lurking around the corner on the leg-side.

After dealing so maturely with the seaming ball it was a frustrating way for the new boy to go, though the shot did look pre-determined. Certainly his bat was low and the ball too close to his pads to play the stroke with control, but the way the ball ballooned up obligingly to Trott shows that England are still getting the little things in this series to fall their way.